Posterous – Review

Our rating:

By: Posterous

Version #: 1.3

Date Released: 2010-12-08

Developer:

Price: 0.00

User Rating:

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A recent New York Times article presents evidence that more and more Internet users are turning to sites that merely ask for brief status updates, such as Twitter and Facebook, rather than writing much longer posts on blogging platforms, such as WordPress and Blogger. The consensus among these users is that ease, brevity, and the far more social capability of their preferred sharing sites make them use the long-form blogging sites less frequently or leave altogether.

There are, however, several sites that seek to fill the void in the middle, sites that enable users to publish without fuss and without constant consideration of the length of their posts.

One of these is Tumblr, the current ruler in the micro/reblogging game, if the consistent rise in its page views and user base is to be the sole point of contention. Tumblr, recognizing the not negligible contribution of mobile users to its member count, supports posting via e-mail and has long ago released a dedicated Tumblr app.

Another site in the same vein is Tumblr competitor Posterous. True to its name, posting via Posterous is preposterously easy. Apart from its WYSIWYG editor and multimedia uploader on Posterous.com, its flexible post via e-mail feature works really well. Taking its cue from Tumblr and countless other blogging and social networking sites, Posterous has also developed its own native iPhone app. And it’s made posting for iPhone-toting users on Posterous even more preposterouly easy.

If you haven’t heard of Posterous before and the iPhone app is your introduction to the site, there’s nothing to worry about. You can register from within the app itself, as opposed to going to your computer or to the iPhone’s Safari mobile browser, simply by posting right away; Posterous will automatically assign a giberrish subdomain to you, which you can claim and rename later on. But if you’re already a member, log in with your account details and a list of your Posterous sites will appear, below which is a button for creating a new site. Tapping on a site title will bring you to another list, this time that of the posts you’ve already published on that site. You can’t edit an already published post from within the app, a glaring omission for some, but you can view, share, and delete it.

But since Posterous is basically about posting, the iPhone app focuses on that by including a dedicated button for posting an impromptu camera photo or video and another for a text post. It should be noted, though, that either button ultimately brings up the same post editor, where you can add more photos and videos (within reasonable limits), specify a post title, edit the post body, add tags, enable geotagging, activate or deactivate autopost (sharing to your social networking accounts, which can be authorized through the Posterous Web site only), and specify if you want the post to be private, that is, viewable only by you. The basics of posting and a little bit more are all taken care of.

Tumblr users who for some reason switched to Posterous will notice that a dashboard of their site subscriptions, a sort of RSS reader where the recent posts of the Posterous blogs they’re following are all shown, is absent here. Tumblr has a dashboard for followed Tumblr blogs on its Web site as well as on its iPhone app, magnifying its social aspect, but Posterous doesn’t, on the Web site nor, predictably, on the iPhone app. Posterous is all about posting. And how.

You may also want to check out our review of Tumblr.